


An Emptiness So Exquisite

by 20Zvorak17



Category: Supernatural
Genre: All of them except non/con and dub/con frankly, Dean is the parent in this household, Eating Disorder, Fem!Sam, Gen, Probably EDNOS but maybe anorexia, Trigger Warnings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2018-12-07 03:00:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11614494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/20Zvorak17/pseuds/20Zvorak17
Summary: She can't control how often they move or that they hunt or anything about her life. Dad decides and Dean enforces and she follows. If she fights, they can just pack her stuff up for her, drag her to the car, make her move at John's command.What they don't control though? What they can't force her to do?They can't force her to eat.





	1. Prologue

How had it taken him three states and seven months to realize he hadn't seen Sam eat anything except rice patties in half of a year? He could, perhaps, be forgiven for not noticing her body becoming sharper and more angular. She covered up with three shirts and a jacket all the time, saying she was cold, and she probably  _was_ , lacking the nutrients and vitamins she needed to stay warm. He could not have been expected to know that Sam's period had ceased.

But how had he not noticed that his sister refused to eat?

Regardless, he thinks he might've liked the ignorance better. When he hadn't known Sam was all, "Already eaten." or "I'm feeling sick. It might come back up." or "I'll grab something later."

Now-following a talk with the school nurse who'd been suspicious, even if she couldn't prove it and that Dean had latched onto like a Terrier because _now that you mention it_ -she doesn't even bother with that. "No, thanks," she says coolly instead. Or worse makes a joke of it, "I'm trying to quit."  _Quit what?_ he thinks.  _Quit living?_

But today. Today had been a battle of wills. "I'm not eating it. You can't make me."

"I swear, you are not too old for a spanking, Sam." He warned her.

"Won't make me eat." She had said, eyeing him in challenge.

And the shit thing is  _she's right_.

"Please, Sam. Two bites."

She softens, but doesn't relent. He just...he doesn't understand. Two bites-hell  _one bite_  -of that offensive, preservative-filled, greasy thing, one single bite of too many calories and pure fat will ruin everything. If he just knew how good it feels to have total autonomy of your body, iron will and perfect self-control--because she's in control of this thing, not vice-versa--if he just knew what that was like he'd never ask her to sacrifice it, she's sure.

"Don't you see this is a problem, Sammy? Two bites and you keep them down, or I'm going to call Dad." He's not really sure what he was hoping to accomplish by threatening Dad. Sam's been shirking his orders, been questioning his authority since she was eleven; it's not until the last year that _Dean's_ authority has become hit and miss. If she won't listen to him, why would he expect her to listen to Dad--and she's thinking it, too. 

Then he realizes, "Dad could have you admitted, Sam. To a hospital or...or a rehab center that specializes in this. They'll feed you meal replacement shakes through your nose. Is that what you want?"

"Dad will think I'm being difficult and attempt to wait me out." She counters calmly. His face pinches (because she might be right, fuck). It's not quite defeat but she feels victorious anyway.

Feels like she had that first month when she didn't get a period, her control of her body finally that near to perfect.

Feels like she's won.

(She's not winning)


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The problem, Dean realizes, is that if he doesn't phrase this exactly right Dad's going to prove Sam right.

The problem, Dean realizes, is that Sam's not wrong. These days (the last several  _years_ ) everything Sam does is with the sole intention of fighting back against John. If Dean can't properly convey the seriousness of the situation, John's going to say  _Wait it out, Dean._ He'll say,  _She gets hungry enough, she'll eat._ Dean wonders if Sam still even feels hunger, or if she's really trained it out of herself; if she'd starved that instinct until it died.

He practices.  _Dad, it's Sam. She's starving herself._

_Dad, Sam won't eat and I can't make her._

_Dad, I'm pretty sure Sam would rather die than eat a bite of anything._

_Dad, Sam's 5'8 and 83 pounds and I haven't seen her eat anything except a rice patty in months._

Finally he makes the call.  _Dad, you've got to come home. I'm scared as hell. Sam's anorexic and I don't know what to do._ Hopes that's good enough.

 

Father of the year, John maybe isn't, but when Dean says he can't handle this, that he's afraid--when his kids really need him--he'll come home. 

 

Dad and Dean talk in low voices that Sam can't hear, with the exception of the occasional snippet.

"...not a phase..."

"...sure, Dean?"

"...do something. Or..."

"...you want..."

Their voices drop even more, so she knows it's no longer an argument. After a moment she can hear footsteps ascending the stairs and she rushes back to her bed, balancing a physics book on her knees. The two men crowd the door. She doesn't think it's deliberate but she feels like she's trapped. "Sam," John tells her, "you are going to sit down at the kitchen table and you're going to eat a sandwich, and an apple and drink a glass of milk. You're not going to leave the table until you have. And if you refuse I will admit you to a hospital."

Swiftly, Sam climbs to her feet, drawing herself to full height and ignoring the light-headedness. "That's not fair."

"Life's not fair."

"I won't do it." Sam says, shaking her head, "I won't. You can't _make_ me eat. You can make me pack and you can make me switch schools and you can make me hunt but  _you can't make me put filth into my body!"_

"Is that you're choice, Sam?"

"Yes!"

"Fine. Dean, I've been on the road for twenty hours. I'm going to get some sleep. Keep watch on Sam. In the morning we'll take her to the clinic."

"You can't do that." She protests hotly.

"I can," their Dad says, a hand on the door frame. "You see, you're twelve, six years away from being a legal adult. So I can, in fact, do this."

"I won't go." She tells Dean sullenly after the door is shut.

"If I gotta carry you over my shoulder, kicking and screaming to the car," he answers through gritted teeth, biting back both fear and fury, "I will. You're going."

She looks tired all of a sudden. "Dean, it'll ruin everything. You don't understand."

"Okay," he says, "chick flick moment time. Explain it to me."

"I'm not in charge of one single aspect of my life. Except this. And I have perfect control over it. Iron will. I make a decision and then I make it so. Dad of all people should understand  _that._ "

Dean thinks it's likely that John is blaming himself even more than Sam inadvertently is. Thinks that while Sam is saying 'This is the only thing I can control', John is thinking 'I took every choice away from her until this was all she had'.

Mary, on the ceiling in a fire that exploded, goes out with a bang.

And Sam will go out with a whimper.

Dean decides Winchester women are just cursed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How is there not a Wincest video to Love Like Fools?


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Eden Fucking Hills where half of us eat our feelings and half of us are being punished for our self-control.

"Let's go, Sam." Dean said, patience gone.

"No. I'm not going."

"Sam, you really are. Now."

"No!"

He looked to the side and exhaled loudly. "Okay." He tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, one arm clasped hard across the back of her thighs so she couldn't kick him.

"Put me down!"

Dean ignored her. 

               ---------------

Here She is. Eden fucking Hills, a place of healing, where you'll be  _punished for your goddamn self control._ It's bullshit, all of it. They're jealous because Sam's almost perfect. Nearly. Her goal is 80 pounds and she'd been _right there_. So she's been forced here. She thinks she knows what they'll want to hear-that's simple. But what they'll want her to do? It...she...they're going to ruin everything. She's worked hard to get this far. The websites she's been on-they described these places. They'll make you eat 1800 calories a day, the website said. If you refuse they make you drink a replacement shake, it had said, and if you refused that? They'd move you to the special ward. Feed you intravenously if necessary. The  _indignity._

See, the patrons had explained, the nurses aren't malicious--they just don't understand. It's the doctors, those ones who use terms like 'EDNOS' and 'bulimia' and 'anorexia'-it is they who are against you.

But the worst is group therapy. All these people who think they have it so tough--the bullies at school call me fat, I see those skinny girls in magazines...

They don't know what tough is; everyone here understands you, the counselor says, we all know what you're going through.

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Unless you have an ambivalent father, and overprotective brother, no home, no control and knowledge of all the things that go bump in the night you can never understand.

She has no control at home, but she has control over this. That's why she doesn't belong with these people.

She's in control.

She is.


	4. chapter four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eating disorders have high comorbidity, particularly with anxiety, OCD, and depression so this might get very, very brutal.

There is way too much food in front of her and they're expecting her to eat it all. Toast--white bread, not wheat--extra calories. Butter--god the cholesterol. And strip of bacon--all that  _fat--_ or a pancake if you claimed you were a vegetarian. A lot of people apparently did that hoping to cut their intake. Still, carbs wasn't as bad as pure lard. She still didn't think that she could do it. Did no one else see that the nurses were  _against them?_ Did nobody else understand that--but no, because this place, places like it, brainwashed you. She'd read a little about them. Supposedly they thought that they were helping but clearly they were jealous. There was a nurse who had to be more than a hundred pounds; over there was a nurse whose thighs touched, even if she sat down slouched and spread.  She didn't understand why they were jealous, though, if they just did the work like she had. It was the  _only_ thing she was good at. The only thing she had. Why did they want to take it away from her?

"What if I don't eat this?" Sam asks her table mate under her breath.

"Incident report," the girl-still skinny, still beautiful, still good but not for long considering how she was stuffing her face--answered.

"That's all?" Her voice was a little gleeful; could she really, truly get away with it?

"Three of them in one month for not eating and they take you to the special ward." The girl warned. "You...don't want that, I promise." She speaks from experience but Sam knows that the girl has suffered the brainwashing of this place so her opinion can't be counted upon.

"Why not?"

"Up here you can earn privileges, right? In the special ward you have to be accompanied to the bathroom and if you don't eat they'll give you a feeding tube."

"They can do that?" She says aghast, "That's gotta be a...a violation of our rights..."

"What  _rights?_ " The girl's voice is bitter now, perhaps more defeated than converted. "We're minors. They can do it if your guardian signs the paperwork."

Which means--because Dad has emergency papers that allow Dean to make decisions, because Dad is probably on a hunt since she wouldn't know the difference anyway--well, it means that Dean will  _know_. The only person she has ever looked up to will know that she is so screwed up she has to get sent to the rehab equivalent of solitary. Mightn't it be worth it though, to be perfect? Still, so far they haven't been able to stop her exercising and even though she can't run ten miles in one of Dean's sweatshirts, she makes up for it in her intensity. She hasn't gained any weight yet even though they've already forced three days of 1600 calories into her body. It had been so pure before, so clean in a way she's never, never been. But it's back now, forced away from the one thing she had control of, from her runs and her scale and her ipecac and her laxatives. She's wrong again, and so tremendously lost. And besides, she gets three warnings so...so...so she pushes her breakfast away from her. She feels justified even as a nurse comes over trying to coax her to eat, even as he leads Sam to the office to fill out an incidence report, even as he tells her she'll see her Doctor today, although they weren't scheduled until Friday. It's after when she pulls her knees to her chest and puts her head on them and just tries to just  _breathe_. It's after that she panics, but they're asking her to change more than a behavior. It's a belief system. It's comparing yourself to other girls and seeing skinnier arms, more ribs and knowing that they have perfect control, iron will, that it's better and stronger than yours. It's believing that losing your hair is a sign of your strength and menstruation a sign of your failure. It's asking her to reverse her whole world view.

To give up being clean and beautiful and perfect.

And she won't, she refuses, it's all that she's got. More than that, though, she can't. She can't do what they want, what Dean wants. 

"Hey, Sam?" The nurse from before interrupts, voice gentle, pretending like he doesn't know she's freaking out, "Doctor Benton is here."

And because she doesn't really know what else to do, she gets up and follows him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold On by Chord Overstreet giving me all types of feels about angsty Winchesters so that might happen soon.


	5. Chapter 5

There is a weigh-in today and Sam’s terrified, aware that her late night work outs in the dark may come to light. If she’s lost weight that can’t be attributed to average fluctuation, what will they do? She has no way of knowing until they tell her, either, which makes it more nerve-wracking.

She steps backwards onto the scale, hoping the weight distribution trick she’d seen online was real. When she hears a distinctly displeased ‘hmm’ from the nurse balancing the scales’ she knows it hadn't been. 

Worse still, later her shrink tells her that her low weight nearly qualifies her for the specialized ward. They’re not sure how she’s gettin’ around the rules but they can tell that she is. Doc gives her until the next weigh-in. After that they get guardian permission.

_Dean’s permission._

She doesn’t want that but she doesn’t know how to eat without paying penance, how to survive without exerting control, how to be okay at all.

She decides to try. She cuts her exercise from nightly to biweekly. She gets breakfast down two weeks in a row before the urgent to shove it away overwhelms her. She wishes she could do the one thing her brother is asking of her. What he’s asking is something most people do without thought and she just. Can’t.

_Dean will know,_ she reminds herself as she walks to the psychologist’s office.

”You were making great strides, Sam. Can you tell me what happened?”

”I couldn’t make myself eat it.”

”Everyone has setbacks,” Sam is assured by the shrink, “but don’t give up and don’t dwell. Just let it remind you to do better.” 

* * *

 

Dean comes for visitor day. John doesn’t but what else is new?

”How you doin’, Sammy?”

”I’m doing better with the food but my anxiety and depression are worsening so...”

All Dean can offer is a hug; that’s okay, cause it’s all Sam wants.

**Author's Note:**

> My understanding of eating disorders is relatively limited; same for how treatment works; please feel free to correct me if I mess something up!


End file.
